Into the Woods at the Bridge Theatre review – magical moments in the woods

A man in a lounge suit saunters apologetically onto the stage, blinking in the house lights. He looks as if he is about to make a cast change announcement. Then he opens his hands and says: “Once upon a time…”

Director Jordan Fein’s magical new production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods is up and running in a way that indicates its intent. The musical, premiered in 1986, is about a lot of things; the way there are no happy endings, how life is always more complex than a story, the excitement as well as the perils of a journey into the unknown.  

But most of all it is about storytelling: the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. The arrival of Michael Gould’s delicately calibrated 21st century narrator in the midst of a fairy story makes that entirely clear.  

In Tom Scutt’s designs the characters line up for that opening against a black background, grouped around a raised platform. There are familiar characters: Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, a Witch. But there’s also a Baker and his Wife, who long for a child, and the genius of the show is the way that the arrival of these unfamiliar figures with their real human feelings into the landscape of myth transforms the narrative, making it dangerously real and unpredictable.

As they all set off on their adventures, the stage splits to reveal a lush forest, with heavy trunked trees and rich green foliage. Lit by Aideen Malone, with video designs by Roland Horvath, it is full of shafts of light that carve through the leaves. The characters, dressed in Scutt’s vividly coloured and carefully textured costumes, are illuminated with low lights that make them look like Victorian postcards.  

Jenny Ogilvie’s low-key but distinctive movement direction gently places them in statuesque groupings as they appear and disappear. They seem at once substantial and unreal, trapped in a picture book yet grappling with huge human emotions.

Fein and Scutt collaborated last year on a radical and revelatory Fiddler on the Roof, and here they once again work with the musical supervisor Mark Aspinall to make Sondheim not only look but sound fresh, with Jonathan Tunick’s orchestrations dialling up the darkness inside the lyrical score. Adam Fisher provides a terrifyingly good sound design that makes the appearance of a Giant absolutely convincing, even though you never see her as she tramples the set, leaving a desolate landscape in place of the glorious possibility of the original forest.

Within this perfect frame, the cast shape their stories. There isn’t a weak link among them as strong-voiced and subtle they bring fictive characters to grounded life. As the witch, Kate Fleetwood relishes every top note and each malevolent intonation. She’s full of power but also very funny, bringing a louche sarcasm to the witch’s pronouncements.

As Jack, the hapless climber of the beanstalk, Jo Foster clutches a puppet version of their beloved Milky White cow to their chest, while lending their own comic timing and vulnerability to the role; Chumisa Dornford-May is an extraordinarily clear and charismatic Cinderella, trapped by her own emotions as much as the pitch on the steps of the palace, while Oliver Savile doubling both as her Prince and the Wolf brings a knowing panache to the humour and the menace of this bored man on the prowl. Gracie McGonigal is an unusually bolshie Red Riding Hood, Bella Brown a sweet singing and tortured Rapunzel.

All of them sing as though they are thinking, as though Sondheim’s complicated, punning, lyrics that twist and turn on themselves are the most natural way to express themselves. Nowhere is this truer than of Jamie Parker and Katie Brayben as the Baker and his wife, who bring a truth and sincerity to every note they sing and every line they say.  

This is the most sophisticated and clever production, confident in every aspect, but they are the heart of it, their dilemmas and changing feelings the anchor of the show.  Her entrancing moment in the woods with the Prince and her realisation of what it means is both humorous and revelatory; his acceptance of loss and recognition of the strength of community profoundly moving.

It’s a great production of a terrific show.  A fine way to end a year of musicals.